The latest Roslyn-based business is Rouse Social, founded by two natives of the village. It is also one that attends to those who use the social media. Numerous providers of the social media can now be combined into one program.
Daniel Smith, a 1993 graduate of Roslyn High School is the founder and CEO of Rouse. Max Siegelman, who is head of the firm’s affiliate and brand partnerships, graduated from that same school in 2008.
Both men had been in the mobile digital space in 2002. They are also former athletes at Roslyn High School and their respective colleges and both remain sports fans. Smith said he uses social media to follow his favorite sports team and felt that there was a better way to keep up with his favorite teams and athletes on social media.
“I just saw the need for something like it [Rouse Social],” Smith said. “Social Media has so many great and popular social networks that there really is a need for Rouse to aggregate it all into one application making it more convenient for everyone. Max joined Rouse at the beginning of the products development and has been a huge part in creating Rouse and its user interface. Max focuses on affiliate and brand partnerships. Max has a great mind and tremendous work ethic, which is a true credit to the Roslyn school system.”
And so, Rouse Social was born. Smith said that the product is a mobile application that aggregates the best of social media from celebrities in music, sports, entertainment and brands into one application. Users select the people they want to follow and soon, their Rouse wall is filled with the Twitter, Instagam, Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, Vevo, iTunes and other social networks and content source from their favorites. Updates, he added, are real-time.
“Rouse Social streamlines the user experience with all of the social network feeds in one place,” Smith explained. “It is unique in that it has privacy settings for users that do not want the world to know who they are following. Rouse allows users that are currently members of a social network such as twitter and Instagram to still interact directly with those social networks from Rouse. Rouse also allows users that are not currently members of any or all of the social networks to still be able keep with everything being posted to them.
“This directly benefits the other social networks as well since all posts are clickable out to the social network the post originated from, which opens those social networks up to traffic they would not have otherwise received. Rouse is great for people of all genders and ages since everyone is a fan of something, whether professional athlete, movie or TV star, singer or band, politician and more. Rouse users just search who they want to follow and they immediately see all of the social posts form their favorites.”
In Roslyn, Rouse has offices on Lumber Road, a place where several new businesses have relocated. After raising the needed capital, Smith and Siegelman launched there in beta this past summer. Smith said Rouse Social has seen an “an amazing number of downloads since beta launch, now over 75,000.”
The two are currently raising capital for a full launch in January 2015. Right now, Rouse Social is available for the iPhone and Android with a 4.5 star rating. For now, more information can be found at www.RouseSocial.com.
In that short time, Rouse Social offers news on over 17,500 artists, celebrities and athletes on the platform.
Shareholders include the rap star, LL Cool J and Teresa McBride, a retired CEO with a technology firm.
“They immediately saw the value in bringing all of social media into one platform and we are very excited to have them both involved,” Smith said.
“Rouse Social is an app that any social media user will love,” McBride said. “It is a convenient and more effective way to follow people, places, teams and more in one place.”
So far, Social Rouse has been featured in Tech Crunch, Billboard Magazine, Z100 and others media outlets. It has partnered with the leading sports content web site and magazine STACK, which is also a Yahoo content partner and has their magazine distributed to over 12,000 high schools nationwide and is one of the most trafficked sports web sites on the internet.
After graduating from Roslyn High School, Smith attended Tulane University in New Orleans from 1993-97 and played for the Tulane Green Wave basketball team in the 1995 NCAA tournament and the final four of the NIT at Madison Square Garden in 1996.
Siegelman attended SUNY Oneonta from 2008-20012, where he played soccer goalie taking Oneonta to the 2012 NCAA final four as captain, while earning All-Regional honors.
